French was as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Apparently, Klein’s contention was that French not only condoned the diary tampering, but was part of the scheme. On the wall in Dick French’s office was a poster that said something like: "Anything worth having...is worth cheating for". That poster was incriminating evidence as far as Klein’s attorneys were concerned. French disavowed any knowledge or participation in wrong doing. The RKO lawyers informed me that the Feds would be coming to the station to interview anyone and everyone. They wanted to know what I knew. "I don’t know anything, I wasn’t even here" was my reply. They wanted to know if I had ever heard of a PD tampering with ratings diaries. Of course I’d heard it. I’d also heard of stations that held contests among the staff to find homes which had received diaries. The interview finally got around to my relationship with Klein. I gave the lawyers the history of our relationship back to the Beatles concert in the early 60’s when I first met George. When asked about the last time I was with George, I told them the first night I was in Memphis. Before that, at the ‘74 Gavin Conference in Kansas City. The more I said, the more they wanted to know. Unwittingly, I mentioned that some of my friends had a conversation at the conference and kidded about finding a guy who worked for the post office for the purpose of identifying homes which received diaries. RKO General already had a boatload of problems stemming from payoffs for oil by the parent company, General Tire. The legal department occupied an entire floor of the RKO General Broadcasting building in New York. The possibility of new Federal charges for fraud sent shock waves through the higher ups. French was relatively new in his GM position. I’m sure he knew RKO would give him up in a heartbeat.

The ratings diary scandal hit the news in Memphis and battle lines were quickly drawn. I was sucked into the whole thing because I was naive. The RKO lawyers passed all the information they had gathered to the Federal investigators. They came to WHBQ to talk to me. I was not happy to be part of the whole thing. One night I was at Elan, a trendy disco with a record promotion friend. Two women approached us. We left with them and went to their condo. The next day, I received a dozen roses from one of the women (I’ll call her EW); later a phone call. I was separated from my wife; living with McKeever. EW invited me to come over for dinner that evening. I accepted. Over the next few days, I spent a lot of time at EW’s place. One night, EW, her roommate and I were stoned and they started asking me about the Diary scandal. I had been instructed by the Federal investigator and prosecutor to refrain from discussing the case with anyone. The Feds were all business and meant business. I was already unhappy for being in the middle of the whole mess and wasn’t about to risk getting into hot water. As the evening wore on, EW and her friend’s tongues got very loose and so did they. As they were attempting to persuade me to talk, they in fact told me they had taken part in the diary scandal by assisting in filling out the stolen diaries. They told me a lot more than I wanted to hear. I never said a word. The next morning when I walked into work, McKeever followed me into my office, closed the door, and warned me that EW’s roommate was George’s old girlfriend. Furthermore, EW allegedly had friends associated with organized crime. McKeever had a lot of friends "downtown". I’d been seen in public with EW and her roommate. Terry was told to warn me about the company I was keeping. I’d already made up my mind to distance myself from EW and company.

By the time the court date arrived, it seemed that I was a key witness for the government. I wished I’d never opened my mouth. I was afraid the Feds already knew about my hanging out with EW. I was equally afraid that Klein’s attorneys knew about it. I was a nervous wreck. The whole thing seems like a blur. The only thing I remember clearly was running into Buzz Bennett in the hall at the Federal Court Building. He shook my hand and I said "what are you doing here?". "I got a subpoena, man" he said. Buzz got on the stand and told the court that diary tampering went on all the time in radio. Buzz's candor didn’t help George. Klein and the postal employee were found guilty. Although not formally charged, French had been the linchpin in the defense strategy. Needless to say, the jury didn’t believe he had any involvement. I had lost a dear friend because of this mess.

The Fall ‘76 ratings were released and WHBQ handily beat WMPS. I began working on plans for the Spring ratings period. We developed an ad campaign "56/HBQ Part Of Everything You Do". French allowed me to hire the best production people and we filmed TV spots with listeners in various scenarios listening to radios tuned to 56. Billboards, bus cards, and print ads were all tied to the theme. Dees was firmly ensconced on WHBQ, Landree was coming on strong in afternoons and Dickie RULED nights. I hired Lisa Smith from a station in Pensacola to replace Shelia. Rusty Black was production director and Carter Davis worked part-time doing production. Judy Smithhart resigned as music director and I replaced her with a gal who had never been in the radio or record business. I figured I could teach her what she needed to know. I was also beginning to work on some new ideas I had for collecting and tabulating music research information and scheduling music. The Spring of 1977, the Q Crew (that’s what we called ourselves) could do no wrong. Every jock and newsperson had the touch. It was magic and we all knew it. It was a feeling we got from the audience, advertisers, and anyone who came to Memphis from around the country. It wasn’t me, it was us and we were bad to the bone. In those days we had to wait about sixty days to get the Arbitron results. There were no advances. I couldn’t be sure but I felt that we just might make a little history.

Billy Davis, Marilyn McCoo, unknown promotion man and me at WHBQ

The Radio & Record Convention was held in Dallas at The Fairmont Hotel. Drew had all the RKO PDs come in a day early for meetings: from Boston, Les Garland; Los Angeles, Charlie Van Dyke and Bob Hamilton; New York, Dan Griffin and John Sebastian; Ft Lauderdale, Rick Shaw; the guy from WGMS in Washington and me. Harvey Mednick was VP of something and he made a presentation of promotion ideas. They were all sales promotions and although Drew strongly believed in working ahead of the sales department, no RKO PD got client driven promotions shoved down their throats. As usual, we all had little assignments and had to do book reports. Van Dyke and I had to present "New Jingle Package Ideas". I can’t remember what we presented but I think it had to do with subliminal sounds. Regardless of what it was, we made most of it up five minutes before the meeting. There were those PDs who took it all too seriously, however, no one threw a ball at anyone. Drew cautioned us to be on our best behavior and to dress nice and eat all our vegetables (just kidding Paul). He extolled the virtues of our prominent and enviable place in the industry and reminded us that most of our GMs were in attendance also.. Garland and I almost burst out laughing primarily because he was kicking me under the table. Garland and I had kept in touch over the years but this was the first time we had been together in a long time. Les loved putting me up to pranks. He’d dare me to do things and I’d do them then he’d sit back and say "Longman (more on the name later) why in the hell did you do that?" Later we’d laugh our butts off. Garland and I were always looking for women. More often than not, he got one and I was left sitting in the bar. Les is a charming devil; I’m just an ol’ Georgia boy. As we left the meeting, Les said to me and Van Dyke, "you know pretty soon Drew’s going to want us all to start dressing alike." Just then we passed the gift shop in the hotel. I think all three of us had the same idea at the same time. We went in and bought identical ties. There was some sort of cocktail party or dinner that night and we all agreed to wear the same color shirts, jackets and our new ties. Later we walked in together and there was Drew, checking on his boys. Paul walked up and complimented us on our appearance. We looked like the ABC PDs for crying out loud. Garland and I slipped out a back door and headed off to meet some record promotion guys for some real fun. Garland and I had been told to meet a record company guy at midnight for a special private presentation for just the RKO PDs  in their hospitality suite. The R& R conventions were much different from the Gavin Conferences. At R&R conventions, record company spent thousands of dollars decorating hospitality suites. There were bars and tons of food in almost all of them, except Capitol. The companies would bring their artists in for the conventions and have them mingle with the PDs and music directors. There were other activities that took place in "second" suites. Only the really important PDs were invited to those gatherings. At midnight, Garland and I went to the designated place. We were greeted by the record company national promotion director and local people. We were seated around a dance floor. After a few minutes a guy gets up and tells us that their label has just signed a new recording artist, Marilyn Chambers. She was well know as the hottest porn star in the world. Who knew she could sing? The guy said that he wanted to introduce her to us and then she was going to lip sync (stop laughing) her new release. They had stage type lighting in the room and a huge sound system. Marilyn entered from another room dressed to kill. The music began and she started to do her number and remove her clothes. Her record wasn’t the only thing brought to attention. We couldn’t believe what we’d just seen. A couple of years later Garland and I saw Marilyn again.

I went to Atlanta a lot. I’d fly in on Friday night and Jimmy’s limo would pick me up. One of my favorite things to do on the way to Marietta was stop at the Varsity in downtown Atlanta and pick up a couple dozen chili dogs. The limo got a lot of stares. As I mentioned before, I’m just a Georgia boy, so why wouldn’t Varsity chili dogs go with Dom Perignon?

While in Atlanta for the weekend, we always had a lot of fun going to emporiums of feminine pulchritude, eating out at places like Sals across from the Fox, or Rue De Paris in Buckhead. I made a lot of new friends in Atlanta. Gary Corey was PD of WQXI AM and the character Red Neckerson on the 94Q morning show. Don Benson was either music director or assistant PD at 94Q. Many times national record guys would be in for the weekend. One of my favorite people was Charlie Minor. Charlie had started his music career as a record promotion man in Atlanta for Bill Lowery after graduating from the University of Georgia.

Mike Clark was a producer for Lowery. Gino Rumple worked for Capitol; Billy Lemmons for Arista; and Long John Silver for RSO. The Royal Coach was still the preferred hangout and if those walls could talk. There was a relatively new trade publication owned by a guy named Ron Brandon. Ron worked for a station in Spartanburg and published the magazine there for a while, then moved everything to Atlanta. Ron was embraced by the music guys and was one of the gang. One visit he and Jimmy asked me what I thought about having a RMR convention in Atlanta. There were already several conventions each year. Gavin was still having conferences but of a smaller scale. R&R was the biggie. Kal Rudman had one every year, but it wasn’t well attended. And lovable Bobby Poe had his unconventional convention each year. Still, I liked the idea and they asked me if I thought any of the RKO PDs would attend. I told them to leave it to me. Ron asked me to help put it together. We began to plan the convention that night.

1977 WHBQ Christmas Card

CHAPTER 15

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